Forum:Original Talk Page Discussion
These are a few suggestions that I think would improve the Wiki. Please comment or add to the list. *Less focus on the movie franchise and more on the original comic series. *A complete synopsis on each story page along with a list of main characters. *Publication/Chronological order templates for BPRD/Abe Sapien/Witchfinder/Lobster Johnson. *Update many of the character profiles as they feature no information on recent events in the series. *Photos for each issue on story pages. --Horrorofsorts 20:00, March 31, 2012 (UTC) I agree. This website is far too concerned with the films over the comics. I think there needs to be a clear separation between the two, especially in the character profiles. The Hellboy as it is at the moment is an absolute disgrace, including information about the comic almost as an afterthought, and no film information should appear in the Character Template panel. It would be good to have each story page have a full synopsis, but I'm very slow at this. I've been avoiding writing them to a certain extent, but I am willing to help out where I can. If we can put together a checklist to cross off as we go, that would help, and try to keep the formatting consistent. If you have any ideas on how to improve those pages, I'd love to hear them. As for templates, I'm very new to wiki coding, and I'm not sure I'm up to the task yet. However, I think it is an excellent idea. I've added a few characters (Iosif, Professor O'Donnell), but I lack any real information to flesh them out beyond where they are currently. I agree, it would be good to have a photo for each issue of miniseries. I did a similar thing on the B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs omnibus editions page, but without sufficient text to balance it out, it can look ugly. Do you know of a way we could format it better? UPDATE: Nevermind, I saw what you did with The Long Death, having a gallery section. I think that works fine. With covers, should we favour the ones with titles or the textless ones? --Sir Edward Grey 07:17, April 1, 2012 (UTC) Well I think we should concentrate on the story pages first before the character ones because the rate that these BPRD stories are being released if we don't stay on top of them sooner rather than later then it will seem like an even more daunting task. I agree that these character pages need work so feel free but I am going to concentrate on story pages. I've been avoiding these pages too but I am re-reading all of the trades now so once I have re-read a story then I can go back and fill in story synopsis for each issue. I will create a checklist as a new headline once I have posted this. I have introduced a new publication order for the BPRD stories, similar to the Hellboy one. The template is very similar but using a different color to tell them apart. Tell me what you think of these and if I should continue. I think a gallery works best if there may not be enough text although it works well on pages like the omnibus editions page so it will have to depend on the type of page. I say for miniseries that a gallery works best and for pages on collections that the side-by-side method is better. As for the text/textless covers I wasn't sure as I prefer textless to look at but those aren't the published covers. The only problem is that these may not be uniform as finding the textless coveres, especially for older series could be difficult. Which would you prefer? --Horrorofsorts 21:19, April 1, 2012 (UTC) I agree, story pages are a much higher priority. I'll work on them when I can too. With the story order template, the colour makes it very difficult to look at and to read the hyperlink. I've altered it to a more muted tone, similar in saturation and tone to the Hellboy one, except olive to match the trade spine. When we do other templates, I'd suggest this for Abe, this for Lobster Johnson and this for Witchfinder. As for the gallery, I prefer textless covers when they're available. I like the format though. It works well. --Sir Edward Grey 03:51, April 2, 2012 (UTC) ::If you're going ahead with these changes, I support them wholeheartedly. I've always been displeased about all the film focus. ::I never found myself good at writing synopses or character profiles/histories, but I can help with scans and miscellaneous information from The Companion and the series itself however I can. For example, I have a scan of how Anastasia Bransfield looks like from The Lost Army, if we can make a page for her. ::Steel (talk) 17:30, April 2, 2012 (UTC) Templates for order of publication: *B.P.R.D. *Abe Sapien *Lobster Johnson *Witchfinder Other templates (chronology etc.) are very similar. Is there anywhere that we can get the textless covers from because I'm having difficulty finding them for a lot of the books apart from the most recent. --Horrorofsorts 17:55, April 2, 2012 (UTC) ::If memory serves me, they're usually on ComicBookResources, but they're hard to find (at least the last time I checked, I was finding it hard). You'd have to go way back in the database. But I do think I had some of the older ones saved, so let me browse through my hard-drive and try to dig them up for you. ::--Steel (talk) 18:01, April 2, 2012 (UTC) ::Turns out I have quite a few BPRD ones! They're textless covers of each chapter that came out, pretty much. I also have some Witchfinder, Abe Sapien and Hellboy ones. Do you want me to start uploading whatever I have anew, or replace the old files that (if they do) already exist on the wiki? ::--Steel (talk) 18:06, April 2, 2012 (UTC) ::Also, I made a page for Tony Masso's Finest Hour a couple of weeks ago, as well as a character page for Fenix, though I wasn't sure how to format the page (history, bio, appearances, etc.) in order to add information to it. ::--Steel (talk) 18:10, April 2, 2012 (UTC) I think it's easier to replace the old ones and upload any that do not have a version uploaded. --Horrorofsorts 19:31, April 2, 2012 (UTC) I think we should remove the "Character" category from all non-comic characters and replace it with an appropriate category such as "Film Character". I've also updated the main page as it was very out-of-date. --Sir Edward Grey 23:22, April 2, 2012 (UTC) ::All right, I've started uploading some textless covers and replacing some old ones. I do have a question before I continue, though. When referring to TPBs or chaptered stories like The Black Goddess, do we go with the cover of the TPB, or the cover of the first issue? The cover of the first issue is on the page, but I also have the covers of the rest of the issues. I can upload them all and we can have a more detailed synopsis for each chapter with an accompanying chapter cover, unless that might be too complicated. Let me know what you think. ::--Steel (talk) 23:42, April 2, 2012 (UTC) :::I think stick with the issue #1 cover, as the trade thing could lead to complications with trades like Gods and Monsters. We could introduce cover images of the trades into Trade Paperback Collections in a gallery section perhaps. :::--Sir Edward Grey 03:04, April 3, 2012 (UTC) ::As for the character category, I agree; film characters is a suitable sub-category, and comic bios should always precede film bios. I have another technical question, however. Is it possible for us to change the template for infoboxes? The white background is slightly jarring with the red colour scheme of the rest of the wiki. Also, for character infoboxes, I suggest adding more information to them, like birthdays, occupations, abilities, and other such fields. Are admins the nly ones able to change infoboxes? ::--Steel (talk) 23:42, April 2, 2012 (UTC) :::No, anyone can edit info boxes. However, if you are going to change the white background, remember that the blue hyperlink text has to be easily readable on it. :::--Sir Edward Grey 03:04, April 3, 2012 (UTC) ::I've also noticed several duplicate image files, as well as some unnecessary ones. How do we go about deleting/editing those? Also, I find We Will Not fade an unnecessary page... it would have worked better as a blog post, in my opinion. It's more of an advertisement than a proper article. ::--Steel (talk) 00:18, April 3, 2012 (UTC) I think that we should stick to #1 cover for the stories and each story should have a gallery, if necessary, with all of the issue covers and the TPB cover that the story is included in. I'm not sure about the gallery at the end of the Trade Paperback Collections page, perhaps there is a way to have a smaller version of the cover included in the tables themselves. I think that the ISBN code is rather unecessary so this column could be replaced with smaller versions of the cover. I will test this when I next have time. --Horrorofsorts 01:09, April 6, 2012 (UTC) :Smaller images of the TPBs in the tables sounds like a good idea to me. Last I checked they were rather large. A gallery for the rest of the covers also sounds like a good idea! :--Steel (talk) 16:19, April 11, 2012 (UTC) I I am now the admin of the Hellboy Wiki! I have now became the admin so in order to begin cleaning up the Wiki to necessary pages I have been deleting very short/unecessary pages. The majority of deleted pages were related to the film as I feel that this is a Hellboy Wiki so it should be more dedicated to the comics with fewer pages dedicated to the film mythology. It feels like the Wiki has two halves; the comics and the films so I am trying to give the comics a majority as it is the source material and the film articles to a minimum to keep the Wiki cleaner. --Horrorofsorts 00:36, April 11, 2012 (UTC) :Awesome news. Good to see those spam pages vanish, as well as those ridiculous film pages like "unnamed troll from Hellboy II". I like all the changes so far. --Sir Edward Grey 03:50, April 11, 2012 (UTC) ::That's great! I think the film should definitely be a side thing and the film histories should probably not even be mentioned on the character pages at all. I suggest having a list of differences between the films and comics on the film pages respectively. ::I also suggest that we categorise the images into galleries soon, seeing as they are close to 400 images now. It might become harder to do so in the future if we do not catch it now. And on the subject of categories, I believe that we could do with some better organisation in that area too. ::I'll be busy for the rest of the month (papers to hand in and the like) but I will be free by the end of April to help out as much as I can. Also, perhaps it would be best if we used the forum section to discuss what other changes need to be done, in order to prevent this talk page from becoming more cluttered? I've never used a forum on wikia before, but it shouldn't be too hard. ::--Steel (talk) 16:19, April 11, 2012 (UTC)